Eddie Redmayne chats to Stephen Hawking as he gets ready to play the physicist in Theory Of Everything

It was only a matter of time before an actor brought the life of Stephen Hawking played out on the big screen, and now in Theory Of Everything, Eddie Redmayne has that job.

But if playing one of the most brilliant physicists in the world wasn't pressure enough, Eddie, 31, had Stephen watching him film scenes in Cambridge, where Hawking, 71, studied and still resides as the Director of Research at the Centre for Theoretical Cosmology within the university.

But by the looks of things, Eddie's acting skills prevailed as the two were seen laughing together in between takes.

The film, directed by James Marsh, will focus on the point in Stephen's life when he met first wife Jane Wilde. She was a childhood friend of the scientist's younger sister Phillipa, and they embarked on a relationship shortly before he was diagnosed with motor neurone disease, at the age of 21.

Felicity Jones of Chalet Girl and Like Crazy fame will play Jane, who married Stephen and had three children with between, even though at the time of his diagnosis, doctors only gave him two years to live.

In her book Music to Move the Stars: A Life With Stephen, Jane talks about the warning she received against her getting romantically involved with Hawking.

'I replied that I would prefer not to know the details of the prognosis,' she writes, 'because I loved Stephen so much that nothing could deter me from wanting to marry him.